The Slow Death Of A Fast Living Replicant
by Jay Gee Three
Summary: Bladerunner 6; the book of the film of the book - Do Androids Dream? Since the film is so different from the original novel, this is the novelisation. Tyrell paused. Roy watched the subtlety of the expressions as they crossed his face. 'Human curiosity overcomes most problems we set ourselves, though we are required to incorporate the terminating gene, we have tried the ...


Chapter 15

JF Sebastien looked anxious as they rode up on the express elevator that ran up the exterior of the pyramidial Tyrell Corporation building. Roy sat with his back against the left-side of the elevator cabin, looking out over the expanse of San Francisco as it came into view over the crest of the hill, as the elevator swiftly rose, just as though he were a holiday-maker on a sight-seeing trip. He'd seen much more impressive sights, it didn't hold his interest; instead he looked at JF's expression as he sat against the opposite wall.

'No need to look so anxious. If he is such a genius he's bound to be intrigued by your next move.'

'Perhaps. But we're not in yet.'

'What do you mean?'

'Just because we're speeding up to his penthouse doesn't mean that he'll accept a visit. You'll see.'

They had sped to the fiftieth floor when the elevator rapidly decelerated and stopped at the fifty-fifth floor. Roy Byron looked questioningly over at JF.

'This is what I meant,' JF said.

Then a voice came over the PA.

'Mr Sebastien? Why are you visiting at this hour?' The voice sounded irritated. JF Sebastien looked at Roy.

'Queen to Bishop six. Check,' JF said without any other greeting.

The sound of rustling papers or bed-sheets, and the disembodied voice came on the PA, 'Nonsense,' it said. Then a few moments later. 'Give me a moment, I'm checking.'

They waited. A half minute passed. Tyrell's voice came back on the PA. 'I see what you've done, therefore, Knight takes Queen.'

JF Sebastien looked over at Roy, awaiting the instruction of the next move. Roy looked as though he had absorbed Tyrell's move and was savouring his next move. He sat smiling. Roy Byron indicated to JF, with an imperious movement of a finger, to come over and sit next to him. The voice came back on the PA.

'You seem to have something on your mind, Mr Sebastien.'

Roy Byron leaned over and whispered the next move. 'Bishop to King seven. Checkmate.'

'Bishop to King seven. Checkmate,' JF repeated, reluctantly forcing the words out. He added, 'I think you will find that I am right,' as though he were talking about something else that had passed between himself and Doctor Tyrell in other conversations and discussions.

Silence.

Then the voice came over the PA again. No words. Just a sound.

'Hmmmm.'

Again, silence. Another half-minute passed. JF shrugged at Roy. 'I said it wouldn't work,' JF silently mouthed.

'It will work,' Roy whispered.

'I thought you might follow with that move. What's happened JF? Did you have a triple-cheese sandwich and a pot of coffee before going to bed. And now you can't sleep. And now you've had some sort of brain-storm. Is that it?'

Silence again.

'We missed you today. I know you're freelance but I was expecting you, remember. And now this. You turn up here, late, with a killer move. Any more brain storms? Like, with the brain chemistry problem? I haven't been able to get in touch with you. You haven't been picking-up. Even your answering service was switched off. You've been holed up in that hovel of yours in Nuevo all day. Is that why you've come over so late? Well then. You'd better come up. We'll discuss it.'

JF Sebastien bent forward and leant his elbows on his knees. As the elevator car started to swiftly rise again, he shook his head and put his head in his hands. Roy smiled and patted his back. JF got up angrily and walked back to the other end of the car. He slumped down and put a hand over his eyes.

The elevator stopped at the penthouse floor and they stepped out into the small foyer of Dr Tyrol's personal quarters. Against the opposite wall were two vast copper plated doors embossed with a repeating 'Moderne' design. Across the centre, at eye-level was a vignette of the tall figure of Diana, in the mannered Moderne style, pursuing the elongated shape of a stylized deer fleeing through a forest. They walked over to it. Up close it could be seen that the leaves of the trees were the numbers used in coding computer machine language and bio-organic regeneration protocol equations.

JF wished he could just open the door and flee but Roy walked directly behind him, his large frame blocking any possibility of retreat. He paused at the door. Roy pushed him in the back. JF pressed down on the handle and the power assisted and frictionless-hinged door belied its size and obvious weight by pivoting open silently and easily on its reinforced hinges.

Doctor Tyrell was still leaning over the chess-board, halfway across the large room, his back to the door. The living room was darkened but also suffused with a light creamy, copper glow. The room was sparsely furnished, there were four antique sofas, from the Italian and Flemish Renaissance, facing each other in a square - the location of Tyrell's famed 'Informal Forum', for discussions with other business and research leaders. A low table stood by each of the sofas. The chess-board table and a few Japanese lacquered panels depicting storks fishing against gold coloured rocks and stones beneath Mount Fuji were the only other furnishings. Around the room there were large groupings of candles. In the penthouse set atop this hive of high-technology Doctor Tyrell lived in candle-lit simplicity. Only one electric light was on, the one next to the chess-board table.

JF Sebastien stepped inside with Roy immediately behind him. 'Doctor Tyrell!' JF said, 'I-I've brought a friend with me. I hope you don't mind. He is an admirer of your work and really wanted to meet you.' Tyrell looked round toward the door with an apprehensive expression, alarmed by the tone of JF's voice. He saw the large figure wearing a mask following him into the room. In a voice flush with malevolence he addressed himself to JF.

'What have you done?'

JF Sebastien walked further into the room, a room he had never been allowed into, and he shot Tyrell a look of silent apology and contrition. He looked shamefaced, 'A woman,' he said.

'Ah. The human factor,' said Tyrell. 'All security systems breakdown in the face of the human factor. A woman; there hasn't been a security system designed that can be secured against that since Adam was a boy.' Tyrell added with resignation. 'We'll talk about that another time. For now turn over your bio-access badge ...'

'Except, she wasn't quite a woman,' JF said as he unclipped his badge.

Tyrell looked at him, puzzled. 'This is no time for riddles,' he said.

'Stay where you are,' Roy commanded to JF and he halted exactly where he stood holding the access badge out toward Tyrell, who was too far away to reach it. Roy took the badge out of his hand.

'Let me explain,' said Roy.

'Somebody had better. What is this about?' Tyrell demanded.

Roy Byron removed the mask.

'Ah, now I see,' Doctor Tyrell said. In that moment he seemed to yield some of his personal sovereignty to the Replicant of his own making. 'Roy.' Tyrell's voice was suffused in this simple utterance with the tone of someone addressing an old acquaintance. 'I'm surprised you haven't come to visit before now,' he added.

'It wasn't for the lack of trying. You don't make it easy though. You're not very welcoming. We had to enlist JF to help us.'

'We?'

'We,' Roy repeated simply, 'Priscilla and I.'

'Ah, of course. You and Priscilla. You're still together?' Tyrell said, then he added, 'and how is the lovely Priscilla?'

Deteriorating,' Roy replied.

Tyrell's expression suddenly hardened, 'Why haven't you done what you were ordered to do?' he asked.

'I've had other things to attend to. I've been too preoccupied by terminating genes to think about terminations and assassinations.'

Tyrell felt a tremor of fear. He coughed and leant on the arm of a sofa. 'Friends of yours have kept on trying...'

'Still. It's never easy to meet your maker. And such a malevolent maker, at that. All my friends are dead. Either because of Security here, or through the bladerunners out there. Priscilla and I are all that's left of the squad. You abandoned us.'

'You should have remembered your targets. Your friends were bound to die. You led them astray Roy.'

'Well, I'm here now. It only takes one to get through. But, we're all expendable, aren't we? Human, or Replicant.'

'You've been reading our history. You'd have made a good barrack-room philosopher. So you have made it, you are here. And what might your creator do for you?'

'Repair and renovation. Overhaul,' Roy replied.

'There is no need to repair what isn't broken.'

'I say that I _am_ broken.'

'Just what is it that you imagine to be the problem?' Tyrell asked in the tone of a medical doctor, as he had once trained to be so very long ago.

'I am the problem...,' Roy said plainly. 'My imminent expiry is the problem.'

'Ah. That is beyond my jurisdiction. Death can't be put off indefinitely, by neither man nor beast nor Replicant. But you can't die, Roy. Replicants don't die, they either wear out, or are life expired.' Tyrell sat on one of the antique sofas. 'In your case Roy, the facts of life, the facts of _your_ life, are these; to make an alteration in the evolvement of an organic life system is fatal. A coding sequence cannot be revised once it has been established.'

'Why?'

'Because that is what we are required to do. The I.R.C. require us to incorporate the teminating gene, so, even by the second day of incubation the cells that have undergone reversion mutations give rise to revertant colonies. We always end up with small clusters of damaged cells, a tumour, and then all the damaged regenerating cells reproduce and overcome the first generation of healthy cells.'

'What about E.M.S. recombination?' demanded Roy.

Tyrell looked past Roy, his eyes glazed as he recollected the failed experiments, of constantly attempting to re-form biology into mechanics. Doctor Tyrell stood up and started to walk within the square of these four sofas, within his 'Informal Forum'.

'We've tried that. Ethyl Methane sulfonate is an alkylating agent and a potent mutagen. It created a virus so lethal the subject was dead before they left the incubator.'

As Roy sat on the Renaissance sofa his eyes followed Tyrell as he walked within the square of these chairs. A meeting that Doctor Tyrell could hardly have wanted but perhaps suspected was going to happen, one day. The more the Replicants tried, limited though they had remained, he must have known that there would come a day when his 'inner-sanctum'; would be breached and he would have to confront the creatures he had devised.

'How about a repressor protein that blocks the operating cells,' Roy stated.

Tyrell turned and looked at him. 'I can see that you've have been reading the research papers,' he said. 'Stop thinking about it Roy. What you seek is the one thing about which thinking doesn't help.'

'I am made to think. I am made, by you, to be like you. To think about it. What about the repressor protein?'

'That has been tried too. It doesn't obstruct continued replication, the renewal of cells, but it does give rise to an error in the replication. Then the newly formed DNA strands carry a mutation and you've got a tumour again.' Tyrell paused for a few moments. Roy watched the subtlety of the expressions as they crossed his face. Tyrell recommenced talking to Roy along a different path. 'Human curiosity oversomes most problems we set ourselves. After all, these are problems that we have made for ourselves. It is not as though an owl has such problem to think about, because they don't think about such things. Not as far as we know! Even though we are required to incorporate the terminating gene, we nonetheless continue to research how to overcome the problems, for the purpose of the purity of discovery and knowledge. For all the sophistication of what we have achieved there is so much we don't yet know. All these solutions you suggest have been tried. There are other solutions we have attempted too. It is like the early experiments in cloning, for a long time they had a recurring problem with the respitory systems. It was inexplicable why. Was it to do with the order that our organs evolved? and how the cells were formed from the information in the original D.N.A. strands in the sperm and egg? Was it do with the fundamental nature of the organs? and so on. It just kept on recurring until by long trial-and-error the solution was discovered. And, now, we are dealing with much bigger problems than that. As you can see Roy, we have thought about these problems and struggled with them. This is as far as we have got with your generation. So far.'

Roy Byron continued to watch Tyrell as walked about. He looked sceptically up at him.

'Priscilla and I are the result of where you have got "so far"?'

'Yes,' Tyrell said plainly. 'But for what you seek, Roy, it is all academic. If we could have made you differently don't you think we would? It is the inevitable decay. It is others who call you Replicants, I don't. Because all of this is so very human, but it happens much sooner and at an accelerated rate than the decay in us.'

'We're not built to last,' Roy observed, and he lowered his head. Then he looked again queryingly at Tyrell, 'Or built especially _not_ to last?' he added.

'One day, a replica of you will be created and _you_ \- it will be as though it were you, Roy - will last. I'll not be stopped by the I.R.C., besides, the light that burns twice as bright burns half as long. And you have burned so very, very brightly.' Doctor Tyrell stood over Roy and stroked his forehead and hair like a father soothing a young son. Roy was, after a fashion, his son. Doctor Tyrell sat next to him.

'I've done... questionable things...,' Roy Byron started to say.

'No. They weren't questionable. They were wrong. Plain wrong. But only by ordinary morality. But the likes of you and I are not bound by that. Such small things as ordinary morality are only for those that have no vision. Think instead of what has been made out of all the destruction you have wrought. You have enabled extraordinary things too. Revel in the time that you have.'

Roy smiled sadly to himself. He put his hands over his face and rubbed his skin. He could feel how it had aged, even in the past week.

'You think we have been..., that I, have been careless with your life Roy...?'

'Not just mine. With Pris. With Zhora. And Leon. And Rye. And Moors. Teslerz. All of the squad. My friends. And... '

'But every generation that passes makes way for the one that follows. In work, in research, in life. And with Life, the more we have of it, the more we want of it. But to live, we must die. That is the other fact of life. Every living being is a staging post to the generations that come after.'

'There is no life extension.' Roy Byron said in a moment of acceptance. Of acquiescence to the fact of Life Expiry.

'No,' Tyrell confirmed plainly.

'Revel in my time? In the time I have left.'

'Yes!' exclaimed Tyrell in a breathless outburst.

'My time? All the slaughter I have performed for The Tyrell Corporation. For you. The acquisition of territories I have made possible.'

'Someone has to own these things. Do you think I wanted these things for myself? Just to have them. No! You were made to think Roy. To think bigger than that. It is our ownership that has caused all the off-world progress. It is nothing that the god of bio-mechanics would bar you from heaven for.'

'Then I choose to revel in my time by continuing on the path that I was set upon by you.'

Doctor Tyrell suddenly looked concerned, 'They'll always be others Roy,' he said guardedly. 'Intellectual curiosity drives evolution now, instead of the happenstance trial-and-error of natural chaos and natural selection. There is no intelligent design other than our own. _You_ are the product and the proof of _that_. There can be no intelligent design without us.'

Roy faced Tyrell. 'So far as you know!' he said.

('Hell, no!' thought Tyrell. 'Where did that come from? A... Replicant,' Eldon Tyrell could not stop himself using the very expression he disagreed so strongly to, 'developing a religious sense. Surely not!')

Roy looked deeply into Eldon Tyrell's eyes. It was he who now did the soothing. He stroked the side of Tyrell's face and bowed down and kissed him on the lips. Tyrell struggled to break free from the firm grip that Roy had upon his head. He broke free momentarily and, in that moment, Tyrell sensed the malign indifference in Roy's expression, knew what it portended - the solution he thought he had devised and that it had succeeded, it hadn't worked! Roy got hold of his head again, around the back of his neck, and slid his hands to the sides of Tyrell's head.

'Killing me won't stop the ...' He was unable to complete his sentence. Roy continued to press, physically effortlessly, until Tyrell's nose started to bleed and he felt the skull crack. Roy was killing his creator, not to be a substitute for, or to replace his creator, but as a last act of - what? Vengeance? Or of the pity inherent in a vet putting down a sick animal? Perhaps, to alleviate a suffering that the sufferer didn't know it was experiencing? Or, as an act of suicide? The information that Roy had sought and had found proved to be no salve. The actions he had desired were never possible.

All the while Roy Byron's face was contorted. Not by rage. It _was_ contorted, but with the agony expressed by a Renaissance artwork, Grunwald's Christ suffering on the cross. It was contorted by the agony of having been forsaken.

Roy continued to press with firm and steadily increasing pressure, he pushed his thumbs deep down into Tyrell's eye-sockets to crush and rip his skull apart. Veins ruptured and blood started to seep out of Tyrell's eye-sockets and mouth. He felt and heard the sharp crack as Tyrell's skull split. A shard of bone jutted through the eye-socket. His jaw slewed round to a crazy angle, almost vertical to the skull but still loosely contained by the packeting of the skin. Then Roy could press as far as his fingers and thumbs could reach, down deep into Tyrell's shattered skull, reach around the fractured shards of skull. Then twist and contort them to a pulp-ish mass.

All the while there was the sound of shouting and sobbing. JF Sebastien had remained standing where Roy had told him to stand. But he was shouting, as though shouting alone would cause Roy to cease.

'Roy! Why are you doing such a terrible thing? Roy!'

The Reps attention had been prioritised toward assassination. He had not noticed the noise. Now his face relaxed out of its agonised contortion. He shifted his attention to the source of the shouting. He looked over at where he had left JF. He turned towards him now and said with a nonchalant air, 'It's nothing worse than I've done before. For The Corporation. There are to be no witnesses.'

JF understood. He looked helplessly around for any way out. In his panicked state of mind he turned, not to the huge open door behind him leading into the foyer but toward the nearest door, into the bedroom off to his left. He didn't know that there was no way out of there. It was a dead-end; appropriately enough.

'This isn't revenge. It isn't malice. I now kill you to relieve those that you would make, the manufactured generations. The ones that would follow me.'

'You can't stop them,' JF said, 'It's just like Doctor Tyrell said. They'll always be others. Wherever there is curiosity...' These were JF's, otherwise, unrecorded last words as he ran through the bedroom door.

But he could not have outrun Roy to the elevator anyway.

Afterwards, Roy rode down on the elevator alone, using JF's bio-access card. As he did so, he punched out at the air and laughed uproariously. This was all part of the purported brain chemistry problem too. The problem lay in how a Replicant felt as a consequence of killing, it lay in the illusion that their physical strength was increased through the act of killing. That they were alive because another had been killed. This after-effect is the constant accompaniment of aggression, controlled or otherwise. The illusion that they had gained, through the act of killing. And, strange as it may seem, for a Replicant, it was all too human; the more venal type of human, but human nonetheless.

Did they gain? They were optimised for controlled-aggression, as command-based assassins. It was designed-in. It was only regarded as a problem, now, because they had turned on The Corporation; these Replicants, this squad, Roy, Pris, Zhora, Leon, Rye, Moor, Teslerz. As was to become apparent, the problem with them wasn't a lack of emotion - the V-K Test was of little more use or relevance as is given to voodoo, totems, shaman and witch-doctors. These Replicants, used as assassination squads, were entirely human-like only in their apparent appearance. They were, first and foremost, tools; and since when did a hammer or a power-drill need a conscience? What good could they be, then? They would feel guilt, and scruples, and, if they felt that, they would surely want to turn away from what they do.

Yet this group of Reps had turned out to be so very human after all. All too human; all too grimly human. The brain chemistry problem in the Replicants, that Eldon Tyrell had cast around to the likes of JF to help solve, was the problem of human brain chemistry. The Replicants were infected with the brain chemistry of their creators, because they were sampled from those that created them. A brain chemistry problem that turned out to be more tenacious than chemical modification could correct.

Chapter 16

In the deep of the night, as the usual night-rains borne in on an unusually strong wind scoured the streets, Deckard drove toward Nuevo. Bryant had called him and informed him of the death of Doctor Tyrell in his personal quarters at The Corporation's headquarters building. His body had been found along with the body of JF Sebastien. The entry record showed that JF Sebastien had visited Tyrell at 9:35pm earlier that evening. But a third party was suspected of the killings. Bryant instructed Deckard to travel out to JF's apartment in the Ninth Sector, Nuevo, to discover if the remaining Replicants were at that address. He couldn't know which of the remaining, known, Replicants had been responsible for this latest killing but he assumed it was Roy Byron.

Something as slender as the fish-scale - that had turned out to be a snake-scale - had turned out to be a hard clue. But otherwise, it had seemed to him as though he had been chasing thin air for the past couple of days, always working on partial information. Which was all he was working on now; he didn't really know if Roy would be at the Millenia building now. Was it a fair assumption that he might trace them to this address? At least, a visit might turn up some useful information, if they hadn't torched this place when they quit it. But he knew from their Inception Dates that they were reaching the end of their life-span.

He had requested Bryant to authorise a cordon to be discreetly thrown around the area of the Millenia Apartments building, but the department was so short-handed it wasn't possible. And he was going to have to tackle them single-handedly. Although Deckard liked the bounty to be split only one way, he knew from the beatings he'd received from Zhora and Leon Polokov the night before that he might not be around to collect. Bounty is no use to a dead man. All that could be spared, be allocated, was a single SFPD heli-craft assigned for thirty minutes to cover the roofs in the area.

As he drove along the lengthy boulevard that is Independence, into the ninth sector, out in Nuevo, this SFPD heli-craft flew low over him and a voice boomed from its loudspeaker.

'This sector is closed to ground traffic. What're doing here?'

It landed a short distance in front of Deckard's vehicle, blocking the road. It's rotors started to run slow. Deckard sighed and stopped his car. He leaned on the button of the police radio communications he had been issued with.

'What are _you_ doing?' he asked angrily.

'Arresting you, that's what I'm doing, if you aren't quick in coming up with a reason not to.'

'Why are you informing the entire neighbourhood? I'm working. That is what I'm doing.' As he said this Deckard realised that he didn't feel any resentment at haring around after these Reps, realised that he was back in the groove of doing the job. 'I'm Deckard, Bladerunner, SATO26-35-4. Filed and monitored. The sector is closed because I requested the cordon.'

'Please hold. Checking that,' boomed the P.A. from the police heli-craft.

He was parked up anyway, so while he waited, Deckard checked his weapons in readiness for the coming sweep of JF Sebastien's apartment.

'You're checked and cleared. Have a good one.'

'Okay,' Deckard replied, 'Thanks. Keep those eyes skinned.' The heli-craft's rotors whirled, the pitch rising, the craft started to rise, blowing the garbage in the street into a whirlwind and pushed it over Deckard's vehicle. The heli-craft driver blinked the craft's spotlight as he rose and Deckard blinked his headlights briefly in acknowledgement. He thought about what the arial cop said, "Have a good one." Given his earlier encounters with Zhora and Leon he knew that Roy was going to be murder to 'product recall'. Deckard said to himself that it could all end badly; very, very badly, with his own murder. The only way I could have a good one is if Roy Byron didn't show up.

He parked-up one block away from the Millenia Building. Deckard informed the heli-craft that he wanted no communication from them other than to advise of anyone, especially Roy, approaching the building. He communicated the suspect tag numbers so that the arial cop could call-up the mug-shots on their screen. He added that he wanted them to fly high, so as not to make their presence over the street too obvious, and use visual amplification for the ident. But he was fully aware that Roy might have already arrived back, if he was going return at all.

Deckard sat in his car and mentally prepared himself. He put in a call to the apartment. A face appeared on his screen, very close to the camera, out-of-focus.

'Hello,' it said. It sounded a little slurred.

'Hello. Is Jif there?'

'Who?'

'JF.'

'Who is it?'

'A friend.'

'He doesn't live here any more,' the out-of-focus face said and the line was cut. Someone is home, he thought. He powered off the blank screen and looked up at the Millenia Building, one block away. He saw there were a row of lit-up rooms on the top-floor of the building. He got out of the car, pulling up the collar on his overcoat and his hat brim down against the driving rain. He walked swiftly down the street, discreetly scanning the Millenia Apartments building from across the street as he did so. He crossed over and stepped under the canopy of the building. He shook his overcoat out and pushed his hat to the back of his head.

He had put on a semi-rigid armour piece under his overcoat. He adjusted it, pulled at it to make it a little easier to move around in. He looked around again. The street was empty. He stepped into the building. Deckard looked at the elevator but decided to walk up the five floors by the stairs rather than have the noise of the old elevator mechanism give away his approach. Catch them on the hop, if possible.

When he got to the top floor he saw that there were four doorways. Four apartments, but only one had a slit of light showing under the door. The door had been left open. He stepped through and found himself in the foyer of a once-finely decorated home and looked around. He immediately saw a crowd of static figures. In the dim light he couldn't make out what they were. He drew his Razr from the holster and pointed it at them as he moved up to them. Half-way across the foyer he could see they were mannequins leaning against the wall. This apartment was definitely lived in. He moved carefully across the foyer. Three figures appeared at a doorway. Deckard didn't know what he was looking at. One looked like a miniature-sized European martinet, the other an over-sized teddy bear. The third figure was a half-sized woman in a gingham dress. The dress was covered in the oily viscous coolant that was used in old automaton-mannequins.

'Home again, fiddley-dee,' they chorused at Deckard, and then they laughed, looking at each other as they did so.

'Hello JF,' they said, then turned and marched away again.

Before he knew what he was doing he had said "Hello" back at them. He called out, 'SFPD! Throw out any weapons you have and come out with your hands up. You have one minute to comply.'

He waited.

Silence.

Someone was in, they'd answered the phone, but now they weren't answering.

Then he heard more footsteps. He stood rigid, ready to shoot. Whoever they were, they weren't trying to creep up on him quietly. A life-sized wooden toy appeared at the same door as the other figures. It was dressed like an English butler, 'Tea or coffee, Sir?' he asked, 'I like coffee, I like tea. Would you like milk and sugar? Maybe you would like something stronger?' Deckard waved him away and the automata raised his head high, turned and walked away. He heard the sound of water dripping somewhere nearby, into a deep pool, or a large bucket. There was the sound of giggling drifting through the apartment.

Before Deckard moved further into the building he put his Razr hand-gun away and drew out the LzrLite Long-Barralled from its deep holster sewn into his overcoat. He checked the first room to the left, the dining-room. There wasn't anything to see in there. Except a boiled egg lying on the floor near the doorway. It was broken, smashed, like it had been trodden on and ground into the carpet. He made his way into the next room.

What he saw stopped him in his tracks. The room was crammed with people. Or that is how it first appeared. He stood motionless, mannequin-like, in the doorway and slowly looked around the room. Even from there he recognised a few faces, but not the ones he was looking for.

Among the crowd he saw a laughing policeman and a chuckling Buddha. There was a rotund pastry-chef that was made to look like it was made out of pastry. Deckard knew this figure, it had been used in an advert and copies of it had stood at the doorway of a chain of French patisseries across the city, Vive La France, years before the last war. He also recognised the Egyptian snake vendor, standing stock still, complete with fez balanced on top of his head at an acute angle. There was a figure dressed like a ballerina, standing still in mid-spin. There was a jester, a harlequin and a minstrel all stood together around a smashed-up mandolin. There were a couple of Pierrot, one was headless and the other was holding the severed head of the other in its hands. It looked like it had been ripped off, by force. It was still dripping the milky-opaque coolant from the severed micro-mesh cooling pipes.

He saw a cherub hanging from the ceiling, just above head height. It was the only thing that moved in the room. It occasionally would go through the motion of reaching over its shoulder and firing an arrow from an otherwise empty quiver. Just as well the quiver is empty, thought Decker, it would be too bad to be hit at a time like this in an fly-by arrow-shooting incident.

He heard snoring and turned towards it. Through the open door of the kitchen was the wooden-headed butler that had just appeared at the door as he had come in. It was slumped in a chair by the cooker, leaning on the kitchen counter. Amongst all the creatures, or automata, or animated-mannequins, it was this one that Deckard was astonished at seeing. You have... or, you had, a most peculiar imagination Jif, he thought.

When Deckard got to the far end of the room he was immediately on guard. He saw a cluster of familiar faces. It looked like a reunion party of some recently retired Replicants. One of them was clearly Zhora. There were another couple of Replicants that Decker had retired shortly before he had quit the last time, Rye and Teslerz. They were smiling at each other. Rye had an ace of clubs playing card stuck on his forehead and a red blotch on his left eye. The red blotch was an interesting touch, thought Deckard, since he had shot him in the head, directly in the left eye.

Then his heart nearly stopped. Behind the party group of retired Reps stood Priscilla and Roy, together. He decided to use the sling on the LzrLite before he challenged them, so that if it were knocked out of his hands, it would remain attached to him and within reach, no matter where it landed. This is why he preferred the long-barrelled gun, when the opportunity arose to use it. He brought up the barrel and trained it on the figures, ready to fire, but neither of them moved. Since he had the time to spare, he shouted 'SFPD' at them. Still, neither of them moved. Deckard stuck the gun-barrel into Roy's back, he sensed the flesh-like 'give', but also some of the resistance of muscle. No reaction. He pressed the back of his hand against the flesh, it was bloodlessly cold. It was probably an early fully-sized bio-organic model, a design maquette, Deckard thought. He manoeuvred around to check the 'Pris' lookalike, just in case. It was, likewise, bloodless and cold. A heli-craft flew by, its lights swept through the tall windows along the room as it passed. He shaded his eyes.

He turned his whole attention to a figure that was sat on a table. This last figure looked curious. But that just made her look more like most of the other automata throughout the apartment. It sat stock still, dressed in a white lace top and very short white shorts over white stockings held up with blue ribbons. It had a white feather boa around its throat and several large pieces of white chiffon laid over its head, as though it were a brides veil. Over her lower face she was wearing a yashmak.

He moved in gingerly and pointed the LzrLite at the head. He kept himself at arms length as he drew the layers of chiffon away. Uncovered, this one looked more-familiar. He reached forward to pull the yashmak off her face. In a single moment he sensed body heat rising off this one and as the yashmak fell from her face he identified it as Pris - just as he was struck, swiftly and deftly, by her right elbow to the middle of his chest. He flew backwards, and was knocked across half the width of the room. What stopped his flight was the corner of the door-post of a doorway behind him. He struck his head, hard, against it.

The semi-rigid armour had saved him from being thoroughly winded by the blow to his body, but this time he could feel his consciousness fading by the blow to the back of his head. He tried to pick himself off the floor, and to lift the enormous weight at the end of his arm. The LzrLite.

She had immediately jumped off the table and leapt into a backflip. Through his fading consciousness he saw her coming at him. He leaned forward as he tried to get up but that just put him into the perfect position for her to land directly over him. Priscilla started to crush his head between her thighs. He knew she ought to be able to snap his neck. She grabbed his head around the jaw and started to twist it, as though she were trying to turn his face toward her, as a girl might do with a doll's head. She gave two solid chops to his neck with both her hands. He should be dead, he thought, but he wasn't. Somewhere in his fuddled mind he remembered Bryant's briefing, that, unlike Zhora who was a kick-kill Replicant, Priscilla was a pleasure-type. Adaptable as they were, it didn't mean that a pleasure model would have the strike capacity in its muscle pack to kill as easily.

The Replicant turned his body fully around to face her. It had white pan-stick on her face and two bright red round patches of rouge smeared on her cheeks like the big red apple cheeks of old-style wooden dolls. As he looked up at her he saw that she looked to be in agony. She stooped over him and lifted his head up before letting go of her hold on his head and kicking it hard as it dropped. His head jerked sharply at the impact and banged hard on the floor surface. She looked down at him as he tried to lift his gun which still felt to him like a dead weight at the end of his arm. She stepped back and her expression relaxed. She casually indicated to him to try and shoot her. He had never seen (or heard in any of the bladerunners 'war stories') a Rep taunt him into shooting. She stepped up onto ballerina points and spun into a pirouette. He regained some of the wind that had been knocked out of him as she did this. She stopped spinning and faced him full-square. She smiled the most beautific smile, then made a gun shape with her fingertips and pointed at her heart. He brought his gun up to fire. As his gun arm rose she went into a spin again. But this time it was not to pirouette but to loose off a spinning kick toward him. She whacked his arm with full-force and the gun flew out of his hand and snapped the sling clips, the gun flew away from him and clattered on the bare floorboards and into a dark corner. Then she struck a short stabbing kick straight into his face. He felt a sharp pain along his jaw and he yowled. It was possible his jaw had been dislocated. As he lay in pain he looked around to where his gun had skidded away to, then he looked up at her. She looked triumphant. But her expression quickly altered, to that of the neutral expressionlessness. Then it changed again, to a look of pain, as though it were reflecting back to him the pain he was feeling. She was a mirror image of his pain. She deliberately turned her back to him. Then the Rep did something very odd, something else that he had never seen before. It walked away from him, deeper into the long room.

He had come properly prepared to this assignment. He had made sure he had his own supply of Drizapone, and some Drexatel, in both pill and liquid form. Just in case. He struggled, through the daze of slipping consciousness, to fish them out of his overcoat pocket. He adjusted his weight and was able to get hold of a half blue-half orange capsule-phial of Drexatel. He put it into his mouth and bit down into the capsule.

The warm semi-liquid slipped down his throat, and almost instantly it hit his bloodstream, as its supposed to. He sat there, just as he had done on the dressing-room floor back at Exotica, for the second time in less than thirty hours, at least, and he knew he ought to be dead.

No matter.

He had taken his eyes off the Replicant as he did this. He heard a rapid thumping sound and looked up to see Priscilla dashing at him and, half-way towards him, she jumped into a cartwheel, then twisted her body to turn into a forward flip. He cast about for his LzrLite. Being fuddled by the strikes to his head he did not think of the Razr hand-gun sitting in its holster inside his jacket! He spotted the LzrLite and sprawled across the floor, scrambling to get to it before she got to him.

She was immediately above him and was about to slam her thighs around his neck, when he got hold of the gun. He twisted his body and fired. It hit her off main target but she was blasted in the soft tissue of the left shoulder, not the main organs or the spine. She landed in the foyer. She shrieked a high unceasing pain-filled screech, in a different kind of agony that seemed to be only partly physical; a realisation of the inevitable Life Expiry, perhaps. She slammed her body and limbs about in a tantrum of agony and dying.

Deckard got to his feet. He was about to fire again but turned the solid weight of the LzrLite around and clubbed her head, over and over, to quietude.

He knelt down beside her.

'Where's Roy?' he demanded. He turned the gun around again and kept it pointed at her. He moved off to her left-side and slapped her across the face. From her prone position, she swiped her right arm out, but it was a directionless, almost a blind, strike. He thought that possibly, with that, she was weaker than it ordinarily would be, and with it she had exhausted the last of her Main strength. The cartwheel and flips were a final useless extravagance. He grabbed her hair, lifted her head and banged her head against the floor.

'Roy Byron?' he demanded again. He slammed her head against the floor. 'Is he coming back here? Is he coming back for you?'

'Roy...' she said, or rather whispered. 'You're back already?' she asked. She gave a half-smile as she looked up at where Deckard had stooped and knelt over her, but her eyes appeared to be unfocused.

Priscilla asked, 'Well? What happennnnnned...' It slurred the sentence to a stop. 'What did Tyrell say?' she asked with a tone of expectation. 'Come here Roy.'

She lifted her right arm to her left shoulder and started to try to undo the buttons on the shoulder of her lace top. She couldn't find them, since this is where he had shot her and the cloth had been shredded by the LzrLite blast. She looked a little puzzled at this and giggled apologetically. But her eyes looked sad. This immediately caused him to think of Rachael. He lent his gun against the wall and picked up a discarded piece of cloth off the floor. He cradled her head in his lap, then he began to wipe the considerable blood splatter off her face. She smiled, so sadly, so strangely sad. Her eyes suddenly snapped into sharp focus and locked onto Deckard.

'Wheres Roy?' she asked.

In an instant Deckard saw that she had revived back into full environment awareness. He fell back from his kneeling position and grabbed his gun and fired again, as he half-leant against the wall, his shot hit her directly in the centre of her torso burrowing through to her spine, finally 'retiring' her.

He stayed where he was, not noticing the awkward position he had adopted in his sudden panic to shoot her. Not noticing the pain around his jaw, the pain that was, thankfully, diminishing as the Drexatel took effect.

He lay in this awkward position and looked at her. He noticed her long straight nose, that was such a mark of Jif's genetic-designwork, and it struck him how, in her 'retired' repose, she appeared to be so much like Rachael. She was clearly smaller, blond, and lighter skinned, yet, facially she looked a lot like Rachael.

Deckard felt around the back of his head. He felt the bloody split and the rising swelling. He reflected on what had just happened. Why am I even hunting these Replicants? Their mission has failed - there is no Life Extension, not when you're a Replicant - and they are clearly very near Life Expiry. They will expire and the problem, the problem of these particular ones, will just go away.

And, he figured, this particular group of Reps he had been re-engaged to 'retire' were being used as instruments, or so it seemed to him. Instruments of war. Instruments of coercion. Instruments of assassination. No matter how fearsome and pitiless they were, they were just that; instruments. It was others that played their tunes, their plans, their schemes, their conspiracy's upon them. It was the fearsomeness, the pitilessness of those who called the tune, that was most chilling.

Those people will never give me the kind of physical pummelling that these Replicant 'instruments' have done, (or may yet do - thought Deckard - if Roy comes back here). But they are the ones to really fear and dread. They had power, and they recognised no boundaries.

He didn't feel like hanging around for much longer, he would have preferred to have abandoned the case. He decided that he would wait for half-an-hour for Roy. If he didn't return by then he would just walk away and let Roy's enforced Life Expiry take care of the problem. In the meantime, he'd still stick his neck out for the bounty, but not for longer than half-an-hour. He needed to be prepared. He needed cover. He looked for a good spot where he could conceal himself and get a shot off. He still didn't have any expectation that Roy would return.


End file.
